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humour

Father’s Day has never been a big deal to me. In fact, sometimes I think we have too many of these days and should be happy with birthdays and statutory holidays. At other times I’m struck that time spent bringing the family together should be fostered especially when there are so many pressures tearing families apart.
So it was with mixed feelings that I found a Father’s Day card from my son as I was cleaning a portion of the basement. I think the card was made at school since it was done on material which was cut up into a mosaic and pasted onto construction paper. It made me smile and laugh so I figured I should scan it in and share it with you.

Renée French is the creator of the two graphic novels The Ticking (2005: top shelf productions GA) and micrographica (2007: top shelf productions GA).

The ticking is my favourite of the two works. It’s a wonderful tale of a young boy born with a deformity and shows the many ways this can be seen. We see the downside and upside through Edison Steelhead’s strength and talent and his father’s, Calvin’s, love and fear. It is told simply with few words and beautifully shaded monochrome art. Yet it is amazing what gets across to the reader. I’m not sure I understand what the ‘sister’, Patrice, brings to the story but it makes me want to keep re-reading the story to figure and savour it all out.

Original drawings for micrographica were little more than 1 cm by 1 cm and were magnified for this novel. Of course they get blown up in size but not much as the book is roughly 12 by 12 cm. And text is added. Naked mole rats and crapballs and teenage humour and child-like bravery are the essence of the story. But it isn’t the art that impresses here. It is more the fantastically quick way Moe, Preston and Aldo and their relationships are explored.

I would highly recommend reading (perhaps buying if you are the art savouring kind) The Ticking first. If you ‘get’ it then you may also enjoy micrographica.

This quote from “The Steel Trap”, a short story written in 1898, by the interesting character George Ade popped up today in my Quotes of the Day feed. Besides being very amusing it sums up so much about our present day society with an incredible economy of language:

Crispin Glover’s infamous appearance on Letterman was in 1987 and yet it still is a hot topic on the internet. That fact, in itself, shows how cool the internet is. I, for one, love it when a host like Letterman is challenged by someone trying something original like Glover or, more recently, Joaquin Phoenix. I love the part where David interrupts Crispin to ask Paul about people who drown or die on stage and Paul retorts “Are you talking about you or him?” Great answer. From what I saw it was Letterman who was drowning there… so much so that he left the stage with none of his sense of humour intact. I love the audience booing Letterman at the end!
No one should deserve to be in such a position of power that they can’t or won’t be moved by something new. Perhaps David was having an off night but it all works out, in a funny way, to be a really cool segment. I watched this recent clip with Crispin Glover talking about it and found it interesting and hilarious! Of course, later on, Letterman was able to be big enough to have Glover back on.

I heard tell of the Font Convention video on Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur’s net@night podcast. For those geeks (like me) who have been in the biz for a while and know fonts this is a brilliant video. I especially enjoyed Arial Narrow, Ransom and WingDing! Very funny stuff!

Of course this campaign is different this year: more substance than I would have believed possible although not as much as I could have hoped… but there’s always room for humour. Here are some links that tickled my fancy: